[140] Codrington, Melanesians, p. 22 sq.
More recently Messrs. Spencer and Gillen have shown that a marriage system essentially similar to that of the South Australian natives prevails in Central Australia; and they, also, regard it as a later modification of genuine group marriage. Nowadays, they say, the system of individual wives prevails—“modified, however, by the practice of customs according to which, at certain times, much wider marital relations are allowed.” But to this rule there is one exception:—“In the Urabunna tribe group marriage actually exists at the present day, a group of men of a certain designation having, not merely nominally but in actual reality, and under normal conditions, marital relations with a group of women of another special designation”; here “individual marriage does not exist either in name or in practice.”[141] But, after all, it appears that even among the Urabunna every woman is the special Nupa of one man, and that certain other men, her Piraungaru only have a secondary right to her. Thus, if the Nupa man (the real, or at all events the chief, husband) be present, the Piraungaru (accessory husbands) are allowed to have intercourse with her only in case the Nupa man consents.[142] Is this modification of the Urabunna group marriage a later development from a previous system according to which all the men of a certain group had an equal right to all the women of another group? Here we are on dangerous ground; nothing is more difficult than to decide whether certain customs are survivals or not. We find modifications resembling those connected with the group marriage of the Urabunna both in polyandry and in polygyny; the first husband in a polyandrous family is usually the chief husband, and the first wife in a polygynous family is very frequently the chief wife. We must certainly not conclude that these restrictions have been preceded by an earlier custom which gave equal rights to all the husbands or all the wives; on the contrary, it is more likely that the higher position granted to the first husband or to the first wife is due to the fact that monogamy was the usual form of marriage.[143] Similarly the Urabunna custom may very well have developed out of ordinary individual marriage,[144] and the cause of it may perhaps be, as Mr. N. W. Thomas has suggested,[145] the difficulties which an Australian native often experiences in getting a wife.[146] As for other facts which have been adduced as evidence of Australian group marriage in the past, such as the jus primæ noctis, &c., I only desire to emphasise the circumstance that extra-matrimonial intercourse is practised by the Australian natives in a variety of cases the real meaning of which seems obscure. In some instances at least, a magic significance appears to be attributed to it;[147] and that it is a survival of group marriage, in the strict sense of the term, is again only a conjecture.
[141] Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 140. Iidem, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 62 sq.
[142] Iidem, Native Tribes, p. 110.
[143] Westermarck, op. cit. pp. 443-448, 457, 458, 508.
[144] Cf. Crawley, op. cit. p. 482; Lang, Social Origins, p. 105 sq.
[145] Thomas, in a paper read before the Anthropological Institute in 1905. Cf. Idem, Kinship and Marriage in Australia, p. 138.
[146] See Westermarck, op. cit. p. 132 sq.; infra, [p. 460].
[147] See, e.g., Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes, p. 137 sq.
I must admit, therefore, that the facts produced by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, and the severe criticism which they have passed on my sceptical attitude towards Mr. Fison’s group marriage theory have not been able to convince me that among the Australian aborigines individual marriage has evolved out of a previous system of marriage between groups of men and women. Nor has Mr. Howitt, in his recent work on the ‘Native Tribes of South-East Australia,’ in my opinion, sufficiently proved that such an evolution has taken place.[148] He blames certain “ethnologists of the study” for not being willing “to take the opinion of men who have first-hand knowledge of the natives”;[149] but I think we do well in distinguishing between statements based on direct observation and the observer’s interpretation of the stated facts. Even suppose, however, that group marriage really was once common in Australia, would that prove that it was once common among mankind at large? Mr. Hewitt’s supposition that the practice of group marriage “will be ultimately accepted as one of the primitive conditions of mankind”[150] is no doubt shared by a host of anthropologists. The group marriage theory will probably for some time to come remain the residuary legatee of the old theory of promiscuity; the important works which have lately been published on the Australian aborigines have made people inclined to view the early history of mankind through Australian spectacles. But even the most ardent advocate of Australian group marriage should remember that the existence of kangurus in Australia does not prove that there were once kangurus in England.